Sign Filtering

Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, "This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world." So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. (John 6:14-15)

There are so many things I have been learning in this story, but this is one of the clearest lessons I have seen about Jesus' view of force. It has become clear to me over the past few years that any religion that endorses or resorts to force is based on counterfeit principles and is not of God. The kingdom of heaven is never about the use of force, for such methods violate the fundamental principles of love and freedom that define the very essence of God's character and methods.

Jesus spent time in His teachings and dealings with others revealing the principles of the kingdom. Here He had just again demonstrated His care for the hungry people by accepting a little lunch from a child (a person who was much closer in spirit and character to the kind of kingdom He was setting up) and multiplied that lunch to feed thousands of people. But not only did He provide lunch for all those present but He provided them even more than they could eat.

This concept of extravagance on the part of God is one that I have struggled with for much of my life. I grew up in a religion subtly based on the idea of pious poverty, a culture where it feels wrong to have plenty, to be wealthy or even to necessarily feel very satisfied. Yet what I see here flies in the face of much of what my religious culture embedded into my psyche and that still thrives in many places today. At the same time, the opposite and popular religion of 'prosperity theology' is not endorsed here either. Jesus did not strengthen the insinuation suggested by Philip's comment by providing sufficient money with which they could buy bread for all the people. He did something very unexpected.

These hungry people likely were the poor of the land. Though some of them may have been better off than the average, most likely it was the lower classes that had been drawn out into the countryside to feast on the words of Jesus and experience His healing touch. They did not have money to throw around easily and it is doubtful that even if they had that there would have been markets nearby where they might buy food anyway. The circumstances detailed here created a situation where everything seemed impossible and the outcome appeared threatening with no human resolution reasonably available. But these are just the sort of circumstances that God seems to revel in at times.

What is important to glean from this story is that Jesus was trying to display the principles of His kingdom and the way that heaven views reality in contrast with how we usually perceive it. Human perceptions of reality almost always revolve around our counterfeit views of what is necessary to move society forward, the very foundations of a civilization rooted in economics, hierarchy and law. Embedded in these foundational assumptions are the relational adhesives of fear, force and shame that first appeared on this earth in the Garden of Eden immediately after Adam and Eve sinned. These false bonds showed up in the very first conversation they had with God in the garden and have colored the fundamental way we perceive reality ever since.

But Jesus came to show us the true reality of the rest of the universe and that we were originally designed to live within even here. This very different way of relating and perceiving never embraces the false elements of Satan's kingdom and never will, despite all religious teachings to the contrary. God does not employ the methods and spirit of His enemy to govern though in His wisdom and grace He can take what we have chosen to do and weave it back into something useful for our good later on. God is not the author of death or of fear or of condemnation and God does not need to resort to force or intimidation that violates people's will to accomplish His purposes.

I noticed this morning in this passage that two times it mentions the idea of being filled. When Jesus miraculously distributed an abundance of food to the vast crowd of very hungry people from a small lunch, He did so and kept doing so until everyone had eaten to the point of being filled before He quit. I find that detail intriguing, but then it goes on to say that Jesus instructed His disciples to fill up baskets of the leftover food so that nothing should be lost. They then report that twelve baskets are filled, one for each disciple that Jesus.

All throughout this story up to this point there is absolutely no hint of any method or teaching involving force. In fact, if the words of Jesus' previous teachings are carefully considered, it will be plain that Jesus focused on the very opposite.

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. (Matthew 5:39-41)

The problem was that like people today, the Jews had a very distorted concept of God and how things should operate in government. While they intensely resented the very suppressive and abusive power that the Romans exercised over them, they still wanted that same kind of power themselves to do similar abusive things to those that they did not like. They wanted vengeance upon those who were oppressing them and they had placed much of their hopes for this in the coming Messiah whom they believed would stand up and fight for them to deliver them from their oppressors and make them great.

But God's government is not based on force and does not employ abusive tactics to accomplish His purposes. God's government does not violate people's free will, for to do so would be to destroy the very foundation of His government – love itself. For true love demands true freedom of the will to choose to respond or to reject love without fear of intimidation. Love can never be produced in the heart through such methods, and without love God's presence cannot function freely within the heart.

Any religion, government or relationship that does not strictly follow the principles of pure freedom and love is of the enemy of righteousness and is operating on counterfeit principles. The people who wanted to make Jesus a king that day were hoping to force Him to be a leader who would help them carry out their own bitter desires on their enemies, not to allow Jesus to govern over them in love. If they had taken seriously the lessons He had been teaching up to this point they would have had to come to terms with their deep hatred and resentment against the Romans and the Samaritans and come to love their enemies as Jesus taught. But their picture of a king over them did not in any way include compassion and love for their enemies; what they wanted was to take advantage of the supernatural powers that Jesus was displaying and subvert them to accomplish their own selfish desires.

They wanted a king who would reflect and advance their own bigoted national interests at the expense of all others in the world. We may at first criticize them for this, but do we think any differently when we mingle national prejudice with religion in our worship, our popular songs and our comments about our political enemies? Really, how ready are we to love our neighbors as ourselves when it starts to become clear that neighbors include enemy soldiers in Iraq, Iran, or government leaders in China or any other place that harbors people who threaten us? Do we pray as sincerely for the welfare of the soldiers and 'terrorists' who fight against our country just the same as we pray for our own soldiers? I fear that our desires for a 'king' are little different than the Jews of Jesus' day who longed for someone to enforce their national pride much more than someone who would reveal a humble, merciful, compassionate Father who refuses to indulge our desires for retribution or revenge.

When the people reacted to the miracle of the feeding by trying to use force to make Jesus a king, it says here that Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. Notice that Jesus did not meet force with force but under the circumstances He simply withdrew from the situation altogether. He defeated their purposes by withdrawing His availability to them instead of arguing with them. Jesus was indeed a King, but He refused to indulge in the temptations of Satan to use false methods and motives to relate to them as a king the way they viewed kings. They believed that to force someone to be a king would be viewed as the highest compliment, an honor like no other. But Jesus viewed life from a very different perspective and saw the dangerous pitfalls intrinsic in it and refused to go there.

This showdown over competing beliefs about the role of a king was very much a temptation for Jesus as well as an expression of unbelief by the people and even the disciples. In His temptations in the wilderness previously Jesus had already faced down the devil directly over this issue, but that was not the last time He was tempted on this point. All throughout His life Satan kept coming back again and again trying from every angle to induce Jesus to use Satan's counterfeit methods to achieve His purposes. These were very real temptations and Jesus constantly faced them repeatedly and had to resist them in favor of God's ways.

This issue of when to resist and when not to resist has made me ponder many times. Jesus says to not resist an evil person but James instructs us to submit to God and resist the devil. There is clearly a place for resistance of evil, but it is not where we often want to resist it. The evil that we are to resist is the internal urges to indulge in the desires of our sinful nature that reflects the counterfeit ideas of God's enemy. This is where we are to put up total resistance while living in complete submission to God's authority in our lives. But where we are not to resist is when evil is being committed against us from the outside by others. This is also where it is most difficult to make sense of God's ways.

Our common sense and even our religious training recoil from this instruction of Jesus. We begin to rationalize and excuse ourselves and come up with very compelling reasons why we should be skirt this instruction. But if we look at the way Jesus related to abusive situations in His interactions with evil people, we see something very different than what most people believe about God today.

What kind of king are we looking for in our lives? Do we desire a king who is going to satisfy our cravings for power over our enemies? Do we want a king who will make us rich, give us the things we want, protect us from enemies who desire to hurt and dominate us, a power God who will give us the upper hand in this world? If so, we are going to become very angry with God sooner or later and will end up embracing the counterfeit god who is ready and eager to fill those roles in our life. The counterfeit god has plenty of power to offer us and will sometimes temporarily bless us magnificently causing us to believe we are in God's will. But too late we will find out that this god that fits our own desires so well is really the enemy of our souls.

There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. (Proverbs 16:25)

The disciple's of Jesus started down that path and soon began to stare death in the face rather up close as the rest of the story unfolds.